Do conspiracy theorists get a bad wrap ?

It's to discredit people who tell the truth. Like scientists that are blacklisted and threatened with corporate lawsuits when their experiments prove that GM foods are dangerous. Before I believe anything, I always do my own research to make sure that there are credible sources that back up the same claims. An example is that HAARP's a US program but unfortunately most news and documentary stories on this come from the Canadian media--that seems a lot more credible these days. But I use Wiki too--just for people who doubt things not from those mainstream sources.

Your wife is not your ex, who cheated on you. I can understand that it's hard to unlearn negative patterns of thought, but your current wife doesn't deserve to be judged by the same yard stick as your previous partner/s. I would stop examining everything down to the last detail, because it's just too easy to filter your observations through your inherent mistrust, and come up with a picture that has nothing to do with what's really going on. Your wife is giving you passionate sexual intercourse. Maybe not EVERY night, but it's a rare person who can get ridiculously enthusiastic about intimacy every night, 5 years into a marriage. Instead of being suspicious, be happy! Use her enthusiasm as an opportunity to try new things and shake up your sexual routine. This notion that you need to "get back to the way it used to be" is crap. You don't have a time machine, you can't go back. You have to acknowledge your relationship as it IS and work on making it a good relationship in amongst all the day-to-day life stuff that invariably puts a dampener on regular romance. Trying to hold it up to the memory of your relationship as you recall it was 4 to 5 years ago is unrealistic and will only leave you frustrated. This guy, IF she has a crush on him, represents a fantasy. Maybe things are not all sparkly and fresh for you two, right now, but there's a big difference between imagining your life as something different and actually deciding to change things. If your wife is sexing you, she's not looking to leave. I would be FAR more concerned if you said there was no action in the bedroom at all. Try to be grateful for what you have, keep working to move your relationship forward, not spend time looking back, and try to trust your wife, until that trust is actually broken.

There are 1000s of Laws which start with "Conspiracy to", the reason is that conspiracies are an integral part of human behaviour.

I think that conspirators hide behind the mantra which says " All conspiracy theories are nonsense " They do this to cover their conspiracy.

I know many conspiracy theories must be wrong; however ,only conspirators deny the existence of all conspiracy.

Seems you have pretty much hit the nail on its proverbial head.

There are enough nut jobs to make those that really understand what's up unbelievable. And there is enough disinformation to discredit just about anything that may in fact be true.

I did a research project on the JFK assassination in college. Researched the heck out of it . . . the stack of books reached from the floor to mid-thigh as I stood by it. Found enough oddness to warrant being the last person to class the day of my presentation -- and if I'd seen anyone I didn't know walk in that door, I'd have skipped. Let's just say that's only the most obvious evidence of conspiracies.

(You may now lump me in with the nut jobs if you wish . . . but read the Warren Commission first, and if you don't see the multiple contradictions, read it again.)

Lets look at a Big one.

Who shot JFK?

I lay these Facts that Don't get talked about at all.

The route was changed that morning,

The Presidential Parade was slowed down.

So my 2 questions are;

Who had the power to to not only change the route bad slow it down?

And the Biggie,

Who told Lee H. Oswald of these changes?

"Things that make you go, Hmm."

So you see, there is a 4th category that those in the shadows who are behind the 2nd and use the 3rd to disqualify the 1st and 4th.

So, to answer your question, Yes

Conspiracy theorist are loons. The same nuts that say 9/11 was an inside job are the same ones that predicted Bush will cancel the election. Gueess what? That did not happen. In fact i am majoring in Broadcasting and my goal is to have a radio show in which i tell a bunch of Gullible Morons the govt is going to kill them. Just like Alex Jones does.

You are a loon as well. You should move to Canada where you will be protected. Loons are common there. You will fit right in.

I don't believe so. Conspiracism is a fundamentally flawed worldview characterized by circular logic, guilt by association and hostility towards anyone questioning the specific conspiracy theory or pointing out its obvious flaws. That is a cult mentality that stifles open debate and hinders progress

George Johnson, author of Architects of Conspiracy, explained that "conspiratorial fantasies are not simply an expression of inchoate fear. There is a shape, an architecture, to the paranoia." Johnson came up with five rules common to the conspiracist worldview in the United States:

The conspirators are internationalist in their sympathies.

· [N]othing is ever discarded. Right-wing mail order bookstores still sell the Protocols of the Elders of Zion...[and] Proofs of a Conspiracy.

· Seeming enemies are actually secret friends. Through the lens of the conspiracy theorists, capitalists and Communists work hand in hand.

· The takeover by the international godless government will be ignited by the collapse of the economic system.

· It's all spelled out in the Bible. For those with a fundamentalist bent, the New World Order or One World Government is none other than the international kingdom of the Antichrist, described in the Book of Revelation.

http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/conspiracism.htm...

Radical politics and social analysis have been so effectively marginalized in the US that much of what passes for radicalism is actually liberal reformism with a radical-looking veneer. To claim a link between liberalism and conspiracism may sound paradoxical, because of the conventional centrist/extremist assumption that conspiracist thinking is a marginal, "pathological" viewpoint shared mainly by people at both extremes of the political spectrum. Centrist/extremist theory's equation of the "paranoid right" and "paranoid left" obscures the extent to which much conspiracist thinking is grounded in mainstream political assumptions.

All these conspiracy theories assume inaccurately that (a) the US political system contains a democratic "essence" blocked by outside forces, and (b) oppression is basically a matter of subjective actions by individuals or groups, not objective structures of power. These assumptions are not marginal, "paranoid" beliefs-they are ordinary, mainstream beliefs that reflect the individualism, historical denial, and patriotic illusions of mainstream liberal thought. To a large degree, the left is vulnerable to conspiracist thinking to the extent that it remains trapped in such faulty mainstream assumptions.

http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/conspiracism-07....

Group one, legitimate whistle blowers, boat rockers are not conspiracy theorists period. They only get qualified in that category if they for whatever reason align themselves with group 2 and 3. Or for opportunistic reasons tolerate their distortions or delusional ideas while they themselves know perfectly well the ideas presented by group 2 and 3 are false.

Apart from that I see the lack of ideological insight and historical understanding as one of the reasons conspiracism is so big in the US. It's obviously the reason why otherwise totlerant individuals repeat anti semetic conspiracy theories that have been around for centuries, in coded language or not because they lack the understanding to know what they're saying

http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/dynamics.html#co...

I have the impression the role of all these conspiracies in American political debate is giving people who start to question the charade quick, easy to understand but wrong and often even more right wing, reactionairy answers. See Ron Paul but that's only the biggest example in a endless list. As a proud leftist I can't ignore that. Many people peddeling these conspiracy theories, including those about the federal reserve, are more fundementally Christean than Bush himself for example or are using stories that have been around for centuries and started in anti enlightment thinking. Without enlightment there is no science, only church dogma,no liberalism, no socialism, not even democracy. Only absolute rule by kings and queens because they're apointed by God and therefore their authority is just as self evident and natural. Still some attack Bush for courting the radical Christean right in one breath and accuse him of being illuminati in the next, clearly having not a clue where and how that story started.

http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/masons.html

So no I don't think they get a bad wrap at all. On the contrary most people simply dismiss their ideas or ridicule them and that's it. They don't see conspiracism as a threat to democracy or civilization itself. I do and that doesn't mean I blindly believe the government. That's an example of the cicular logic of conspiracy theorists. If I don't buy their theories based on my own research, intelligence and insight that lead me to believe it's BS and not just BS but BS hiding reactionairy ideologies I must be a sheeple who blindly believes the government. Everyone who remotely knows me knows that false. Even CB didn't say he blindly believes the government, classic strawman argument.

http://skepdic.com/refuge/ctlessons/lesson9.html

I can hardly edit anymore or my answer gets cut of. Real conspiracies do exists, they usually get exposed. History however is not one big conspiracy. That's where I draw the line and where the theorists go overboard. You don't have to accept anything, niether do I. People trying to shove their ideas on me while those ideas and theories are based on verrifiable lies and distortions will not deserve my respect or cooperation whether they are US government officials or members of the truth movement. Your original Q was if CT get a bad wrap. My answer is no, if anything they don't get seriously called out enough

9/11 you didn't need to be half awake to see what was going on.

Drug companies?

Oil?

Come on!!

I think some people are just AFRAID of the truth.

No that's just a conspiracy theory.(I couldn't not).